Trumps Owe DC Contractors Millions

Just the latest in a series of lawsuits for alleged nonpayment spanning decades

Just weeks before the election, President-elect Donald Trump bragged that his $200 million renovation of Washington’s historic Old Post Office Building was completed “ahead of schedule and under budget, thanks to what he called an incredible team of people,” reports Jackie Northam. During the ribbon-cutting ceremony in late October, notes Northam, Trump heaped praise on the “hundreds of construction workers, electricians, maintenance workers and so many others who helped make this project a reality.”

“On these big jobs these should be paid. It’s ridiculous that a small-time operator has to beg for its money,” a lawyer for A&D Construction said. “It’s put him in a very bad situation right now.”

But months later, some of those companies are still awaiting payment for their work, according to documents obtained by NPR, filing liens against Trump International Hotel “totaling more than $5 million,” says Northam.

As we discovered far too late in the campaign, the Trump Organization has been involved in more than 3,500 lawsuits over the last three decades, with the majority of these cases filed by ordinary American citizens whom Trump refused to pay, for one reason or another, for services rendered. In business, at least, Trump doesn’t discriminate: he stiffs both large and small businesses, and high and low-wage-earners, equally.

Since the 1980s, in fact, Trump-owned businesses have repeatedly failed to pay small business owners and individuals by keeping such cases tied up in courts until these smaller enterprises give up or give out and cease doing business altogether. Making America Great Again is nothing more than a slogan and just one more empty promise from a man without conscience. Time and again, he has shown us that he relies on fraud and coercion to accomplish nearly everything he does. And he has taught his children to do the same.